Wearing a sweater over the shoulders has a lot of negative connotations. But if you can get away with it - because of your style, of where you are, or just because of your personality - it’s incredibly practical. This suit I wore at Pitti earlier i...

This is intended to be a partner to the ‘If you only had five shoes’ article in our Wardrobe Building guide, which was all smart footwear. Today’s piece is shoes that aren’t smart enough for a traditional office or - perhaps a better defini...

Earlier this month I visited Seoul, to see some of the tailors I had been intrigued by but mostly seen from afar, and to visit some of the shops and brands. My impression was of a dynamic city – new development, new retail, every shop with a dis...

I didn't buy any clothes this month. That wouldn't be a hardship for most people and it wasn't much of a hardship for me, but I was surprised how much it changed my perspective.   On the day after publishing our article announcing our Dry January p...

By Manish Puri Forgive me for starting with such a blunt question.  I know that, in common parlance, ‘snob’ is a pejorative term. However, when it comes to matters of dressing, it’s worth recalling the words of Yves Saint Laurent who said, “...

Max Dietl and Curd Ju?rgens. I’ve always found Germany an interesting country stylistically - one with a rich bespoke past but little left today, perhaps hampered by its attitude to dress and to smart clothing in general. In order to give the coun...

Dry January is, at least in the UK, an opportunity for people to give up alcohol for a month to recover from some of the excesses of the holidays. It is in that same spirit that during January, Permanent Style will not write about any new clothing. T...

I love cotton knits in the Summer. I couldn’t always see the point of them, but in the past few years I’ve regularly taken one on our holidays (usually to Portugal or France) and I adore the feeling on putting one on as the day cools down. They p...

One of the reasons Western and denim shirts have been so popular in recent years is their versatility.  On the one hand, their conventional pale blue means they sit easily beneath all manner of jackets or suits, while adding an intentional, unexpect...

UPDATE: This is a nice video from Diegos showing how espadrilles are made. You can see the better, neater hand sewing of the soles mentioned below.  I remember clearly when I got my first pair of espadrilles. I was 19, on holiday in Spain, and bough...

I wasn’t going to do a ‘high summer’ version of our seasonal Top 10. After all, the spring edition back in April included such things as panama hats and boat shoes.  But everyone’s stock has been arriving so late that the intervening months ...

Simon, Would you be willing to do a post on (casual) summer dressing? It’s the area of dress I struggle with the most. Every time I go on summer/spring holidays I find myself browsing through the internet looking for a good mix of casual and el...

The memory that comes back vividly is cycling over to the Drake’s office, on a Boris Bike. I was going to see Matt and Nathan for some reason, and then going for a drink afterwards. I had a moment of sheer panic. Riding along, I started freaking ou...

When I first had this cotton jacket made, I noted that it was a tricky one to work into an outfit. The vintage cotton cloth (more details here) is rather rough and casual, yet the cut and style are quite smart. Having it as a double-breasted jacket...

When I travel, my default these days is a blouson over shirt and trousers.  It makes a nice switch from tailoring during the working days - perhaps a little more comfortable, but more importantly just a change that feels as good as a rest.  The...

I've been on holiday for the past two weeks, swimming every day, and have noticeably lost weight. I'm tightening the side adjustors on my trousers where I didn't before. It reminds me how frequently readers ask about such fluctuations in weight, a...

Today is a lovely day in London (the day I write this, that is, July 3, not the day it’s published). Sunny, a light breeze, a few clouds drifting across the sky.  It’s twenty-three degrees celcius. The kind of temperature where yo...

By Manish Puri If the average PS reader is anything like me (and after nearly a decade of reading I’ve no reason to believe they’re not) then the standard holiday wish list might read something like: good food, a nice drink, a museum visit, a fri...

Not much of an excuse to post this, except to celebrate being on holiday.The nearest I can get is the Rapha gear, which is performing very well. There is some geeky satisfaction in demonstrating that wool (mix, jersey) and leather (shoes) perform bet...

Adam: Can you offer some advice on packing for traveling and extended holidays? I will be on a 10-week holiday in western Europe this late summer-fall. I am at a loss as to how many sport coats, shoes etc I should pack. I know that I will be able to ...

Great as Instagram is, a definite flaw is its lack of an effective archive. There’s no way to search old images, so unless you save an image yourself, you can't find old pieces or browse effectively.  Just as important a frustration - for me - ...

Gauthier Borsarello is one of the most refreshing people in menswear today. I hope that came across in our recent piece on his shops and projects in Paris - including Holiday, Le Vif and L’Etiquette magazine.  What we didn’t get a chance to go i...

Philip Warkander is a Swedish academic, lecturer at Lund University in fashion studies.  We got to talking recently thanks to an introduction by Dag at Saman Amel, and it was interesting how many of the topics Philip covers - from the value placed o...

At Eden Roc on the blue MediterraneanEsquire, August 1936: "One of the world's most fashionable swimming holes, Eden Roc at Cap d'Antibes, has no beach at all, just steps and all sorts of intricate plateaus that have been cut out of the rocks.Against...

This summer suit from Sartoria Cornacchia was made for me last year, and I would like to apologise for the delay in covering it. I didn’t get around to shooting the suit until the end of the Summer; events and the pop-up then got in the way; and by...